Death and Mr. Pickwick

  ‘What brought this book into the world? We may say it emerged from its times, and if we never see such times again, perhaps there will never be another Pickwick. The world grows less eccentric, less Pickwickian by the day. That is what I feel whenever I pass a school’s gates, and I see the children in their uniforms, stamped out in the same design.

  ‘Now, I have heard it said in some quarters that Pickwick is not as popular as it was. And I have also heard it said in other quarters that Pickwick is not the very greatest literature. I remember once I expressed the view to an old university friend of mine – Mr Gregg, there he is over there – yes, I did say Gregg, not grog – that there was something deep and profound in Pickwick. “Nonsense,” he said. “It is about men of a certain age going out and getting drunk. If that is deep then I would like to suggest that, at certain stages in my life, I have indeed been profound myself.”

  ‘But I say to you, that whatever is the place of Pickwick in literature – and I, like many, see it as the most remarkable piece of prose fiction in the English language – but I say to you that whatever is the place of Pickwick in the pantheon of literature, nothing holds such a place of affection in the heart of the people. For it is read by all, by the high and by the low: by the duke in his castle – by the labourer in his cottage – by the scholar in his ivory tower. This extraordinary appeal – this universal affection – could surely only be achieved by a work that lives close to the common heart of man. Oh and of woman too. Although, it must be said, I have heard great Pickwickians remark that Pickwick is not capable of being understood by the fair sex.’ (A cry of: ‘It is!’) ‘I tease, I tease. What I will say is this: few things bond us together as Britons like Pickwick. You laugh and see yourself in your fellow man.

  ‘In our troubles, we as a nation laugh. Even on the battlefield, in scenes of the greatest woe, with bursting shells falling all around, there is still humour. In the pursuit of the noble cause, when adversity is great, we still laugh. In the minor awfulness of the tax demand – we laugh even then.

  ‘And for that reason, Pickwick is the most beloved book in our language. It is part of us. Part of our minds. It is no mere novel.

  ‘There is so much more I could say, but I shall not, for I could continue for ever. Those of you who attended the Pickwick memorial service at the abbey on Sunday would have heard the Canon of Westminster say that Pickwick is not a novel, but a universe. He was right!’ (‘Hear hear!’)

  ‘And so as we gather here today to celebrate the first appearance of The Pickwick Papers, one hundred years after the event, I say to you, in all honesty, that the arrival on earth of Mr Pickwick is an event of such importance, an event of such greatness in human history, that, if anything, we dishonour him with just a single day’s celebration. I have come to believe that we should dedicate the whole year of 1936 to him. My lords, ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you to stand, and raise your glasses – Mr Pickwick!’

  There was the thumping of tables, and enthusiastic cheering and the toast was drunk. Several hundred people began to sing, spontaneously, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

  10 May 1941

  Luftwaffe bombs have already destroyed many Pickwickian sites. Camberwell, where Mr Pickwick carried out unwearied researches, has been one of the worst-hit parts of London. Huggin Lane has been demolished. Today, the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons sustained terrible damage: thousands of anatomical specimens, human and animal, are no more. The skeleton of Chunee the elephant was reduced to splinters.

  January 1944

  This month, I was the guest of a fraternal organisation, the Manchester Pickwick Club. A member rose to his feet, and said that he had been pondering the section of the immortal work which dealt with the matter of temperance. (‘Boo, boo!’) He said he had been considering the scientific mystery of that person in the pages of Pickwick, the one-legged Thomas Burton, who found that his wooden legs wore out quickly when he drank gin and water, but then found they lasted twice as long, a difference he attributed to having given up gin. ‘I believe,’ said the speaker, ‘that the correlation has not been properly explained between fewer purchases of wooden legs and being a temperance advocate. After much deliberation, the explanation for this mystery is plain to me. It is that wood does not rot so quickly when the leg’s owner does not have to piss so often in back alleyways.’

  He was immediately fined for ungentlemanly language. The chairman called for a peroration and was fined himself for using long words.

  July 1975

  I heard an anecdote, which once could not possibly be true, but nowadays may be, that a woman who asked for The Pickwick Papers at Heathrow airport was told to look in the magazine section.

  8 December 1980

  One cannot escape ‘Imagine’ on public-house jukeboxes. John Lennon, one fourth of the only cultural phenomenon that rivals Pickwick, has been shot. Now his song ‘Working Class Hero’ plays on the radio. I am perhaps one of the few who thinks of Sam Weller as the song plays. Sam: the original working-class hero. Good and loyal Sam. A man who distrusted all that was established and pompous, but would never be part of the vicious mob, because he was content with being what he was, Mr Pickwick’s servant.

  And Sam would never be a phoney.

  *

  WHEN I HAD FINISHED READING Mr Inbelicate’s narrative, he was asleep.

  Over the next few weeks, his condition deteriorated. There were far fewer raps with the Dr Syntax cane. Often, he asked me to sit at his bedside as I worked. Once, in a gentle voice he said: ‘It would please me if you did the section about the events at Widcombe Hill. I would like to know that part has been done.’

  *

  AT THE END OF THE parade of shops at the foot of the Widcombe Hill district of Bath is a smart, square-built public house, whose hospitality has attracted customers for three centuries. Above its entrance stands a statue, a creature in lime, oak and mahogany: a white deer. It is the very statue that once belonged to Moses Pickwick. It is the last surviving relic of the old White Hart, of Bath.

  One warm evening in 1999, two young men stood at the bar, cocksure grins on their faces, enclosed within a conspiratorial cloud of cigarette smoke. They had discussed the early music of Blur; they had spoken of how dull a certain lecturer was; with those subjects exhausted, one young man contributed to the cloud and then said: ‘Do you know what would be a laugh?’

  Whatever it was, a quantity of sniggers resulted in his companion.

  The young men returned, in the middle of the night, accompanied by two other young men. They looked in the windows. No sign of life. They stood at the entrance and looked up and down the moonlit street. Deserted. A man climbed upon another man’s shoulders. A leather bag was handed up, and there was the clink of metal. The feet of the white hart statue were unscrewed from the plinth. The statue, with some effort, was passed down to the fellows below.

  What japes the foursome played when they ran off to the woods! Riding the hart, pretending to bugger it, holding a can of beer up to its mouth, making it speak like a ventriloquist’s dummy. Then one took a saw from the leather bag.

  ‘No, don’t spoil it,’ said another.

  ‘We can’t take it all.’ The blade was drawn across the neck of the hart, and the antlered head hewn off. The men ran with it for a while, holding it aloft like a championship cup. Then a well-placed kick sent the head spinning like a rugby ball, splitting the wood, sending it over a low tree. Another man picked the head up from the ground, and ran with it, into the night.

  *

  Some months later, the white hart’s headless torso was found in the stream in Prior Park, among plastic sandwich containers, discarded sweet wrappers and used condoms.

  A new head was duly made, with real antlers, supplied by a venison farm. In 2003, the restored white hart was unveiled. For the first time in the statue’s history it was given a name: Knobby, whose significance could be discerned by standing at the entrance of the White Hart public house of Widco
mbe Hill, directly underneath the statue, and by casting one’s eyes upwards, between its hind legs.

  *

  ‘HOW SAD,’ SAID MR INBELICATE, from his pillow, ‘that the White Hart’s statue was treated with no respect by the thieves. But,’ he added, ‘the statue lived again. There is hope. If you will be so good, Scripty, as to turn off the light, I must sleep.’ As I was about to close his bedroom door he said: ‘Poor Moses Pickwick. What would he have thought? But who remembers Moses these days? Good night, Scripty. I am so tired.’

  In the morning, there was no answer when I knocked on his door. It took me several minutes to gather the courage to enter. When I did so, I was accompanied by Mary. Mr Inbelicate had died that night.

  *

  Under the provisions of Mr Inbelicate’s will, I knew that I would be able to continue the work, and had an obligation to do so. He had already mentioned that the will was in a deed box in his office, and I realised that I would have to open this box simply to find out Mr Inbelicate’s real name, to register the death. For he had been assiduous in keeping up the pseudonym Mr Inbelicate, and I had never seen any indication of his real name.

  Within the box, and on the will itself, his name was at last revealed to me. He was Robert Barton. Barton is a name we have met before.

  My supposition is that Mr Inbelicate was Wonk’s descendant, the last in the family, and Wonk’s association with Seymour had provided the impetus for investigating the true story of The Pickwick Papers. I may say I am inclined to believe that Wonk was himself the incarnation of Mr Inbelicate who entered Westminster Abbey in 1870 to inspect the coffin of Dickens. Wonk must have vowed that the untruths of Dickens, Chapman and Forster could not be allowed to stand. Even the termination of his own life would not halt the work. Even death would not sever the love of one man for another.

  *

  IT IS THE LIE OF novels to pretend that life has a plot. The truth of life is in Pickwick: that one thing just follows another. We may strive to find pattern and meaning in The Pickwick Papers, and sometimes we find it, but never do we succeed to our complete satisfaction; thus, we read the book again from the first page to the last, in our search for the meaningful whole.

  In breaks from my work, I have watched Big Brother on television, a rambling, plotless series, in which alcohol fuels many an episode. Often have I thought that, if the age of Pickwick is over, there is still something of its spirit in that show. I have watched the Food Network too – and seen the enormous portions consumed on Man v. Food and the gobbling roadtrips of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: two series which promise, like Pickwick, the abundance we have craved since Eden.

  Though being fat, in the modern world, is not what it was.

  And we live in the e-age now; the age of Alan Turing, whose favourite novel, I have heard, was Pickwick. There may come a time when even the work’s title, the very ‘Papers’ of The Pickwick Papers, requires explanation.

  I am now packing up Mr Inbelicate’s library, documents, pictures and general Pickwickiana in tea chests, for everything has been sold to a collector, prior to the house itself being sold. There are scores of drawings of Mr Pickwick, for many artists illustrated The Pickwick Papers after the original trio of Seymour, Buss and Browne. Pickwick is, I would imagine, the most illustrated work in the entire history of English literature. And when I consider the whole of Dickens’s work – has any great writer ever been in such debt to artists? Even if Dickens had cut out every single picture, he could not change the images in readers’ heads. Mr Pickwick will always look like Robert Seymour’s Mr Pickwick.

  There is, however, still a piece of unfinished business. It has been unfinished for over 175 years. It is my duty to bring it to a conclusion.

  *

  The morning after telling the story of the dying clown, when Dismal Jemmy stood with Mr Pickwick on Rochester Bridge, Jemmy promised a second story, which he would send to Mr Pickwick. One can imagine Robert Seymour’s despair when he read that Dickens wasn’t finished with Dismal Jemmy yet. After the horrors of the dying clown – after believing that Pickwick would be back on course – Seymour discovered that the future promised more of the same.

  Dismal Jemmy’s second story never arrived, but that is not to say it was never conceived. It falls to me to deliver Dismal Jemmy’s lost tale.

  So let us imagine the lugubrious man, who does ‘the heavy stuff’ in the drama, sitting in the Leather Bottle public house in Cobham. Rather than mail the story to Mr Pickwick, Jemmy has mailed an invitation to listen. So, an audience gathers: Mr Pickwick, Mr Winkle, Mr Snodgrass, Mr Tupman and Sam Weller. Jemmy takes from his pocket a long and dirty strip of paper, and, after stirring a hot, strong rum, he begins to tell his tale, sometimes holding the paper close to his face to read the lines aloud, and sometimes merely using it as the inspiration for an extemporised account.

  *

  ‘There is nothing exotic or foreign in these events,’ said the dismal man. ‘I shall not speak of distances far from here. All took place but a few miles from this very house, in the depths of Cobham Woods. Those woods deserve more notice than is usually bestowed, for they hold an extraordinary building. A building which has that most mundane of purposes – to hold the dead remains of human beings. It is a mausoleum.

  ‘Sickness and old age might add to this building’s occupants, but never poverty and want, for no poor man would have his final resting place in such an edifice. I speak of the mausoleum of the ennobled Darnley family. It is strange, singular and impressive, with a stone pyramid incorporated into its structure; yet its strangest feature is not architectural – but that it was never used. No coffin was ever deposited within its walls, and there has been just one resident, and he a living man, whom I knew before he entered the mausoleum, and whose downwards path is also known to me.

  ‘The circumstances of the mausoleum’s construction are worthy of note. The Earls of Darnley were wont to be buried at Westminster Abbey, but too many deaths and too little space resulted in the filling of the family vault to capacity. Thus, an architect received the commission to create the mausoleum, to serve the needs of the Darnleys for generations ahead. The location was chosen to yield a view of the Thames, and the Medway and the Kent Downs, and in due course a square building in Portland stone, incorporating the prominent pyramid, arose upon Williams Hill, the highest local point.

  ‘Inside were its empty coffin shelves. All that was required for the building to begin its working life – if I may use the expression – was a death and a consecration. Death there would have been, but consecration was down to the Bishop of Rochester. I have heard that he required a fee of five hundred pounds to perform the service, though I would not care to speculate on whether that was true or not. The significant fact is that the consecration did not take place. The result was that this building – this grim hotel – did not receive any guests.

  ‘It is easy to imagine the earl’s craving to put the building to use. It is easy to imagine his private cursing of the bishop. And one day, a peculiar notion occurred to the earl.

  ‘He decided that, if a man could live alone in the mausoleum for seven years, like a religious hermit, the building would be spiritually stamped. He put the suggestion to his wife. “He must truly be alone,” she said, “with no visitors, and no contact with human beings at all”. She decided also that all the basic politenesses of civilisation should be dispensed with – and so, as well as spending seven years on his own, the occupant must never wash, never shave, never clip his hair, and never trim his nails.

  ‘The earl and his wife derived considerable amusement from this idea, and servants often heard laughter behind the stately door, and conjectures of a man with fingernails the length of a gardener’s shears, and a beard like an overgrown hedge.

  ‘So a large sum of money – a virtual fortune – was offered by the earl to anyone who stayed in the mausoleum for the seven years, according to the stipulated conditions.

  ‘Many applied, and each was persona
lly seen by the earl and Lady Darnley, but one man stood out: a sailor, with a well-worn leathery face, and an unyielding stare. I first met this sailor in a public house in an alleyway not far from the Thames – I forget which alley now, but we remained in contact. He told me of his plan to enter the mausoleum; and though I warned of possible consequences, he was determined upon the course.

  ‘“I can do seven years easy,” he said to the earl. “Few luxuries on a ship. Long time away from home. If I can call England home. Seven years in a mausoleum would be a merry break.”

  ‘“Are you quite sure?” said the earl. He said it with a hope in his voice that the man was sure.

  ‘“I shall occupy myself with my thoughts and come out a wiser man – aye, and a rich man too, if you keep your promise.”

  ‘“Rest assured we shall, sir,” said the earl. Documents were drawn up.

  ‘It was arranged that the sailor’s supplies for seven years, including the limitless grog he insisted upon – “The best part of a sailor’s life”, he said – would be delivered in the middle of the night, once a week, and placed outside the entrance to the mausoleum. The sailor must under no circumstances communicate with the man who delivered provisions. A bell would be rung to indicate the arrival of the delivery cart, and its departure.

  ‘Late one summer evening, outside the mausoleum, the sailor shook hands with the earl and Lady Darnley. He passed the earl a piece of paper with my name and address upon it, as he had neither family nor friends. If he should be found dead, I was to be informed. And with that, he entered the empty abode of those departed.

  ‘You may ask: “What went through the sailor’s mind?” I know something of this.

  ‘He stared at the recesses in the walls – those empty shelves for coffins. He did have some pangs of regret, for despite his boasts, seven years is a long time. The days passed, and weeks, and months, and seasons. What will loneliness, and an ever-present reminder of death, do to a man?